


who stole the cookies?

by littlealex



Category: Arashi (Band), Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Crack, Film Noir, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-09
Updated: 2009-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex





	who stole the cookies?

It had been a long day. Filming, dancing, rinse and repeat. All I wanted to do was to sit down with a glass of milk and the cookies I had bought on the way to work, relax, and wait for the other clowns I worked with to finish so that we could call it a wrap. But when I got to the green room, the cookies were gone.

I looked around the room for witnesses or perpetrators but there was only one man, sitting with his eyes closed on the couch.

"Aiba, did you see what happened to the bag of cookies I had here?" I sidled up to him, asking quietly and I could see from the twitch in his features that he was only pretending to be asleep. I nudged his shoulder and he pretended to wake up.

"Oh, Nino. Hi. What?" His acting skills were getting better (which was lucky for him, with the drama coming up and all), but he still couldn't fool me. He licked his lips, a clear sign of guilt, and it was as I was drawn to look at his mouth that I got my first clue: crumbs.

"Cookies. Mine. Where are they?" I had neither the time nor the patience to play his games, so I put the squeeze on him with one of my best glares.

"They were your cookies?" His eyes were wide and I considered that I may have been a little hasty with my compliments on his acting skills. "I thought they were Sho's! I mean, they were in his -" He stopped his sentence halfway through when he realized he had said too much.

I knew where to look for my next clues, so I left Aiba in the green room cursing to himself.

Sho was by the catering cart, and in a moment of pure speculation I wondered if maybe he wasn't trying to regain some of the excessive amounts of weight he had lost playing Kamiyama. I almost forgave him, before I remembered the smell of the freshly-baked cookies in the shop. I stormed up to him, frowning as I tried to shake the feeling there was something wrong, and grabbed a fistful of his shirt.

"Hey, watch it, I still need these for -"

I cut him off.

"Cookies. Mine. Where are they?" I felt like a broken record, but I didn't care; I was feeling reckless now, the memory of that sweet bakery smell still lingering on my taste buds.

"Cookies? What would I want with cookies?"

"Don't play games with me, boy," I warned, shaking the fist with his shirt crumpled in it. "I know they were in your possession! Just tell me where they went and I'll let you go, you scoundrel."

A flash of confusion crossed Sho's face (at my vocabulary or the situation, I couldn't be sure) and he shook his head. "I'm sorry you lost your cookies, Nino, but I didn't take them."

I stared at Sho, stared him down hard, before I let him go. The look in his eye was honest, and I knew when Sho was trying to cross me and when he was being a straight shooter. This wasn't a lie, so I knew I was back to square one.

There were only two other people left to consider: Leader, and Jun. They were both likely suspects, with both motive and means, and the only reason I approached Leader first is because he couldn't lie to save himself. (Whereas Jun, on the other hand, could lie to me with the steadiest eyes I've ever seen.) With Leader, the interrogation was simple: "Did you take my cookies?" I asked. "No," he said, and that was it.

That only left one person: the pretty princess himself.

I waited until Jun's shoot was finished and then caught him from behind as he sashayed down the hallway towards the green room. I covered his mouth with my hand to stop the surprised noise escaping him, and pushed him against the wall. The hall was empty, and Jun looked like a trapped mouse, eyes darting around for some sort of escape route as I leaned in, thinning my eyes and putting a finger over my mouth to indicate he should be quiet. Convinced after a moment that he wouldn't make any noise, I removed my hand. He gasped in a breath, but didn't say anything, and I had him right where I wanted him.

"You'd better have a very good reason for taking my cookies, Matsumoto." My voice was steady, steadier than I thought it could be as I felt the rush of adrenaline that came with catching the culprit.

"They smelled good?" he ventured, and instead of a slap across the face, I rolled my eyes at him because petulant behavior was best met with more petulant behavior.

"Not good enough. What are you going to do to repay me?" My voice was scratchy with anticipation of some sort of conclusion and I thinned my eyes intimidatingly (he didn't look intimidated yet). He looked a little bored and shrugged.

"I won't remind you that _you_ were the one who stole the cookies from _me_ in the first place."

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you." I let go suddenly, like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over my person. The memories came flooding back - the bakery wasn't real, just a dream, and when I'd seen the cookies on the table there, reality blurred with dream, and I'd taken them like a thief in the night.

Without knowing, _I'd_ stolen the cookies.

I lowered my voice to a whisper, shaking my head as I moved back and walked down the hall like a broken man. "Couldn't have been..."


End file.
